Dimensional Descent

Leonel rushed to capture some creatures to stabilize his situation, and once he was done, he didn't rush up the mountain yet. Instead, he went to every mountain he missed, plucking away every Forgetful Orb that he could find.

Between the ones he took away from the corpses of Deputy Pavilion and Pavilion Heads, and the mountain ranges he had yet to visit, he gathered over 300 of them. This number was a huge boon to him. He could help a large number of people progress through the Impetus State.

Aina didn't really need it. Just with her Soul Clairvoyance alone, she could probably walk through the Impetus State blind and with her limbs bound. The real question was the others. Leonel was worried about how long they might take to catch up.

He gave them as much help as he could, and it wasn't like they were slow compared to everyone else, but it just wasn't enough.

He didn't have the time to allow them to slowly grow. They needed strength now, and this was the only way to ensure that it could happen. He almost wished the True Dream Plane was harder so that he'd be able to gather more.

However, he pushed down this thought. This was too dangerous. If Minerva had a different sort of temperament, or he didn't succeed in his breakthrough, or any number of other little things didn't go just right, he wouldn't have been able to succeed like this.

When Leonel was finally done, he met the tall mountain with a smile on his face. Then, he began to walk up it.

The pressure of the Dream Force washed over him. It felt not too dissimilar to the stairs he had to walk up to reach the Life Tablet, but this time, it didn't seem to care that he was a Sovereign.

Usually, this mountain was meant to be walked up in a tandem. This was a race to the end, not a fight to the death. However, Leonel, though not the first to do so, was a minority in what he was doing now. Taking on the pressure of the mountain alone was something only some had managed to do.

Of course, this number wasn't exaggeratedly small, especially since this was among the weaker True Dream Planes.

Even so, Leonel did so with a smile, basking in the waves of pressure. It almost felt like a massage for his mind.

He paid attention to the different quirks of the Dream Force, and he seemed to be able to feel the subtle differences as he progressed. It somehow felt to have character, and yet completely free from restrictions at the same time. It was a peaceful time.

He didn't even notice when he had already walked to the top of the mountain. If it wasn't for the fact that there was simply nowhere else to go, he might have just continued walking without a care.

Before him, there was an extremely large orb. It didn't look like a Forgetful Orb, though they shared a similar shape. Instead, it looked like it contained countless fluttering golden runes inside, each one shaped into a flying butterfly.

The movement of the runes was erratic and difficult to grasp, but it was beautiful nonetheless and had a weird sort of... order to it.

It was the same feeling he got from the Dream Force around him, having endless potential, and yet didn't feel flippant or unorganized either.

He reached forward and touched the orb. The treasure seemed to sense that Leonel was the only one left, and the world rumbled.

At that moment, the Vast Dream Pavilion suddenly moved. From the 9999th spot it shared along with the three other Dream Pavilions that had entered along with him, it shot upward blazing back into the top 1000 and appearing near the top 100 in an instant.

The stele trembled and then, under everyone's astonished gazes, the Vast Dream Pavilion moved up one more spot, firmly taking 100th place while the former 100th placed Dream Pavilion, the Rushing Stream Dream Pavilion, fell to 101st.

The gap between 123rd and 100th was indeed so wide, but no one thought that the Vast Dream Pavilion would take such a commanding victory. Even if Leonel had been first, if there had been a second, third, and fourth place, the Challenge points would have been distributed in a Tier system. Fourth place would probably still fall out of the top 1000, but it wouldn't be a problem for the rest to remain.

In that case, Leonel would have at best moved up five to ten spots. But this time...

This was a huge deal. The divisions in the rankings were as follows. There was a dividing Tier for every 1000 spots where both the strength and Contribution Points leapt forward considerably. Then, there was the 100-999 Tier. Following this, there was an enormous chasm and then came the top 100.

There were special benefits provided to the top 100, and there was a further large leap for every ten spots you moved up.

Even so, there was no doubt that the top 100 was made up of true powerhouses...

Because this was the stage where Creation State experts began to appear.

There was no doubt that Leonel had truly poked a hornet's nest this time. But he wasn't thinking about any of this right now as he had been ushered into a world that felt eerily similar to the world of rewards he used to enter after clearing Zones back in the Dimensional Verse.

Clarence had said that the Dream Pavilion had a great number of Contribution Points that they couldn't even use because the higher-ups kept making new rules about who could trade for what in a deliberate attempt to suppress them.

But following a Challenge Victory, depending on the Tier of True Dream Plane, and the thoroughness of victory, there was a whole world of things opened up to Leonel that the higher-ups couldn't stop him from taking at all.

Leonel grinned.